of noting a

densely pulse

transform your sight into sound, after a click –> anew

“A singularity, according to the general theory of relativity, is an infinitely small, infinitely dense and hot point where the curvature of space-time and gravitational forces become infinite.

I imagined this singularity to be a small, black orb. Shortly, before the Big Bang occurred, I imagined the orb to cycle through what I call pulsations: a process in which the singularity would begin to grow in size but, due to its immense gravity, would eventually return to its initial state. With each successive pulsation the singularity becomes larger and larger and the process takes longer and longer. I imagined this singularity to have reached a critical mass at which point its gravitational force becomes too weak to keep itself together which in turn, results in the Big Bang.”
-alvarez, on his composition, “in the beginning”

renew, to do again, a-new. to dredge
so that we might not set ourselves to secure faustian commission.
to trade it for a-

hegel writes that we find “abstract form ready-made” (Phenom 19). we draw away from our grounds. let this movement lead us at times away from our selves, but not trouble to take us away from our others. along with hegel’s //phenomenology//, may our life’s work, activity unfold to reclaim fullness and fervor from arresting doubt. between the hammers of repetition and accident–that is what seems to be a plan and no plan at all–our sense loses sense. may we seek it out still. without sense we lose each other, a silence settles the resignation of human expression to utter failure. we cannot fear failure (make it utterly); else we lose what is truly divine in our living–the relation between. against defeat, even in humility and humor!, we are charged to renew. in our anewing, we honor the plasticity of the speculative, to actualize. to create anew of the ready-made because “the power of Spirit is only as great as its expression” (Phenom, 6).

modernist's still/stijl

we may follow modernism so far, ultimately toward its own dissolution. but the lovers of structure, they were makers anew, and their at times egregious rite can still highlight for us the (dis)juncture of transcendence and immanence, when life, love abuts law, when plan embraces and at least does not fear accident. like apollinaire’s “il pleut,” we hear the maddening pitterpatter and are torn–the play of o so many shadows–may we “listen to the fall of all the perpendiculars of your existence.” and we begin anew.

-the trial of socrates-
philosophy is a quest. a love of wisdom, which is never closed. it is a some times difficult path–in plato’s allegory…republic bk 7…we are trapped, chained below to watch the shadows on the wall. we think these shadows to be real. we are chained, we know nothing else. and then one frees. to see anew, in light, is difficult. even painful. but then glorious. we wish to share our vision and movement. we descend again to go back for our others…
-in his allegory, plato warns us that the enlightened–who has broken his chains–must descend again into the cave of shadows to help his fellows still chained. and that they will not necessarily welcome the new arrival with open arms. instead of an invitation to anew life, the broken chain might appear to be a burden/demand. the chained gang judges foolishness, error harshly; and so they must not be foolish. can not error.
-from the republic: another thought: “remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are…from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind’s eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh”
-well, let us be ready to laugh, but not exercise such exactitude in our system of pointing that we poke a body to death

and socrates, in his (un) apology, argues for his own death sentence.
…basics, oracle notes socrates to be wisest person. incredulous, he travels to so-called wise people, finds they are not wise, gets them angry while he presents this truth…realizes the oracle to mean that wisdom is knowing that you know nothing.
- he says of his conviction, “I have been convicted for a lack–not of arguments…but of bold-faced shamelessness and for being unwilling to say the sorts of things to you you’d have been pleased to hear” (apology, 38d)
- what is the nature of his lack?
- wisdom is for socrates a knowing that we don’t know.
- he is convicted for a lack, so why does he die with knowledge? despite many efforts to break him out, socrates stays to drink to his death.

the law wins when we accept our punishment without violence. this is not to suggest physical violence; theoretical violence is our movement, our protest of death, our renewal. as though our act of sense–like socrates staying in his jail cell–could be interpreted by the foul conscience with its weight to move the chains…the death that plato’s //republic// allegory warns of is not to encourage us to rush headlong into it…our quest is contingent upon us living to breathe truth with others!
-i know that i don’t know. if i die for knowing that i don’t know, i will be good. and should i be convicted for a lack, i hope to continue, unknowing, for as long as i can, even at the expense of the unjust order whose judgment saw fit to punish me for lacking.
let us see our escape not as cowardly, but as our gift, a renewal.
i don’t want to die but in vain.

the search for meaning might lead us from truth

why does socrates stay to die?
is it a problem with his grasp on living, its form?
- from timaeus, we find form to affix a category to a raw experience: “the accounts we give of things have the same character as the subjects they set forth” (sect 29b). our very articulation deepens the shades of subjective materiality…what we interpret is real. our designations matter (e.g duchamp and art). and these designations are locked in a tense dance with what is unformed. let these tents, this tension not lead us to a bad dealmaking–to supplant tension with the salve of organization, categorization, difference and structure–these are yokes that at first glimpse appear to be helpful tools.

socrates will stay to face death for his beliefs–he will die knowing that he knows…that, for example, that the city/state would topple if he were to disobey his father, who cared for him, and whom he agreed to live with… (cf Crito)
- let us not treat life so cruelly. we are here and we get it wrong! your end will come, mortal; let it be in vain!

socrates’ death casts a pall over the tradition of western philosophy: it is a haunting reminder. that love is cruxcified.

when we love, love truly, depossessively, uninterestedly, openly, we lose fear.

socrates suggests the fear of death to be a marker of a wisdom that is misconceived.
- “You see, fearing death…is nothing other than thinking one is wise when one isn’t.” (Apology, 29 a)
- i tend to fear death most when i am unhappy. sadness is related to fear; i suppose sadness, too, is related to a false sense of wisdom…melancholy is o so fixed upon her pursuits, her attention unwavering, smothering, despotic.

might it be a sadness that excites fear? when i feel the ache, anxiety increases…
and this implies that in love there is no sadness…can this be so? in true love–not these false ads to loving, mis-in-formed…via law, empty ritual, should/ought pre- and proscription…
in true loving there is no “wronging” an other. and lack changes phase to emit its beautiful corona…as the undetermined

-the dream dared-

how dreaming and abstract art pull us out of a routinized lockstep of expression and interpretation, to rekindle life anew.
-we forget and we recreate/recount; we might see these modes as mistakes…challenges to an exactitude, but they are significant to the real…the interplay of real and imaginary, of our belief and the symbols we enplace to worship.
-we are what we dream. our dreaming mind is not a separate mind from my waking one, it is a collage work of what we live. the idea of collage maintains difference…for there is no collage without juxtaposition. we feel the pressure from inevitable irrational juxtaposition which results from the spreading contagion of difference. which is only a disease if we can no longer see how there is also a sameness, no border.
- “what is real” depends on our belief and interpretation. this is real and imaginary.
- the way that our experience–which is not just empirical, but also mystical and ineffable–transforms what is; for, if the real is not changed/impacted from our belief in the real, than our lives are futile. we essentially live in a motion picture–simply existing to be presented with a separate moving show. this is a problem…a resignation to the dream machine. to the fetish.
- this is the way that there are hiding spaces in our looking

"glimpses" a ghostly presence

-real v unreal is pervert’s view from the fence-
we often associate perversion with the gaze, as one is stuck to look and not live one’s imaginings. look but do not touch. (this is a perpendicular of another sort.) and recall apollinaire asks we let them fall.

there is a discourse that treats abstract art and dreams as the unreal (the difference that spreads between real and unreal; between un re solved space and figuration, dreams and waking life). In //Interpretation of Dreams// freud argues that dreams are not meaningless; they bear on our waking moments; dreams are complex; dreams are wish fulfillments. we forget dreams, they are “mutilated by the untrustworthiness of our memory” (550). we also recreate our dreams, we have a tendency to find to ascribe meaning, complete the incomplete sign…
-non-freudian practitioners take this reconstruction (forgetting, recreating) to be arbitrary and misleading. but freud argues that this reconstruction, this forgetting is part of the revelatory unfolding of our unconscious, through consciousness.
-to lie, reconstruct…is not necessarily a nefarious manipulation, for we lie at each and every telling of event. we may never put in words what just happened, exactly. we may simply offer a (re)semblance. our editing is indicative of our mind at work, at play. freud quotes heine in a footnote to say, “Rarely have you understood me, and rarely too have I understood you. Not until we both found ourselves in the mud did we promptly understand each other.” (552, quoted from Heine in //Interpretation of Dreams//).

our gait is clumsy, we make mistakes. this is the case even without some one to tell me. wrong exists, and some times i am its cohort. we are in the mire. we lift ourselves toward brilliant heights, we root around in pleasant tactility. it is all a part.